News that anti-terror officers trawled Damian Green MP’s personal emails for information, including details of Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti, has further highlighted the government’s worrying attitude to civil liberties, says
Chris Huhne MP
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As you may know by now, Index on Censorship and English PEN are running an inquiry into English libel.
Jonathan Heawood of English PEN spoke to the Bookseller about the disastrously lop-sided defamation laws, and particularly the effect they have on book publishers:
‘We’ve been startled by the extent of this problem. Stories and books, which have a strong claim to the public interest, have been suppressed by the threat of libel action. Because of the extortionate costs involved, most publishers would rather settle out of court than face the risk of an unsuccessful trial.
‘Some larger firms are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds defending themselves. For independent publishers, that level of expenditure simply isn’t an option.’
The rest is here
We are sorry to announce the closure of Press Gazette magazine.
For 43 years Press Gazette has been the leading magazine for the UK journalism profession. Wilmington Group plc bought Press Gazette out of administration in 2006, since when we have invested significant sums each year to try to develop the magazine and to bring it to profitability. Unfortunately Press Gazette, along with much of the profession, has suffered from a declining market during these years and its losses have increased. We have therefore been forced to conclude that the market required to sustain a commercially viable Press Gazette magazine no longer exists. The last hard copy edition of Press Gazette will therefore be the May edition which will be published in April.
During Wilmington’s stewardship there have been several positive developments. One has been the rapidly increasing traffic to the online edition of Press Gazette. Whilst we will no longer be able to offer the magazine’s content online, we aim to develop this site as a resource for the UK journalism community, and we plan to roll out additional functionality in the coming months. Another success has been the British Press Awards which have gone from strength to strength over the last three years. We remain fully committed to running the British Press Awards and similar events, through which the whole industry can continue to celebrate the quality of UK journalism.
While Ian Tomlinson, who died of a heart attack last week during London’s G20 protests, was not actually involved in the protests, this video still raises questions about how the police handle demonstrations.